Cramming 'Papers, Please' onto Phones

https://dukope.com/devlogs/papers-please/mobile/

by nycpig • 4 years ago

1297 180 4 years ago

Man it is gonna be so nice when the average young adult has a device in their pocket that folds out to the size of a paperback, or even a magazine, and we can start making popular culture that fits that size again instead of everything having to make sense through the tiny window of a phone.

blooalien• 4 years ago

From the article: "Now, here, in 2022, desktop computers no longer exist and all computing is done via handheld mobile telephone."

They're kidding, right? Nobody in their right mind actually believes that, do they?

DizzyDoo• 4 years ago

Of course, he just called it a "handheld mobile telephone", that's tongue-in-cheek.

kencausey• 4 years ago

It's hyperbolic truth, acknowledging that the future is now.

fragmede2• 4 years ago

All is hyperbole, since the ergonomics on a laptop are terrible, and there will always be a segment for which that's a showstopper, but it's already true for certain segments of the population. Especially among the less privileged where there may not even be a desktop computer available or only at school/library, mobile phones are increasingly where work is done. Writing essays and emails, and filling out important forms, may not be the most ergonomic, but it beats not being able to.

Look at devices with foldable screens and external keyboards like the Asus Zenbook 17. Without getting lost in arguing semantics of if an iPad (mini/pro/regular) sized tablet counts as a mobile telephone, it's clearly not a desktop, and it's easy enough to imagine that desktop computers will go the way of the mainframe.

a9h74j2• 4 years ago

I took that as either [kidding] overstatement (to bypass discussion of why) or short for desktop computers no longer exist [for my market purposes].

To your general question, I've heard a professor lament a student stating that all CAD applications should work on phones.

kergonath3• 4 years ago

In terms of number of hours used daily, there is no context. Mobiles are the largest video game market, and the most used computing platforms. So, not quite all computing, but an awful lot of it.

the_af4• 4 years ago

Yes, it's tongue in cheek.

aliqot3• 4 years ago

I'm noticing a lot of the younger crowd don't seem as glued to the phone as their parents. Materialists will always be materialists, but as an adherent to Ordnung, I don't own/need a phone, so it sticks out and it's obvious to me that the normal garden variety youth these days are not as absorbed as the first generation to this little thing known to 'create fire' because it is now commonplace. A computer in your pocket has 0 novelty or wow-factor to this generation, as it should. Nobody fawns over a butane-lighter or debit card, they're commonplace despite being relatively new.

This isn't just in my community, it's noticeable enough in my travels that it seems to be a trend. I assume it is because of more short-format digestible content, along with the shift of social being one-to-one and one-to-many, to being many-to-many, in the sense that you're not necessarily seeking out those you had a direct relationship with, you're seeking out elements and segments of a topical zeitgeist, whether that be tech videos, memes, cat compilations etc.

I also have another hypothesis- when phones that provided a rich experience first debuted, it was the nerds and city folk who got it first. iPhone then brought this mobile-first-lifestyle to the stylemakers and artists and those whose inner monologue is narrated by Justin Long, folks who'd likely have bought anything apple anyway. From there, smartphones and rich experiences were disseminated into the lesser elements of the greater public who either are receptive to tastemaker's influences or have limited option to refute the convenience of popularity; popular hardware is cheap, ubiquitous and accessible, some might say in some regards modern smart phones are disposable.

What I'm getting at is this, this stuff is no longer a mystery to this generation. We are now 2 or 3 generations removed from this type of pocket-computer being anything wow-inducing. I think of it sometimes like when I was a youngster, the class of people who traveled via air vs everyone else at ground level. Air travel had a mystique and prestige, this person must be doing something to be enjoying a cigarette and being served a glass of wine however many feet in the air, direct to destination. The same way I might not be in admiration of my neighbors boots for having a good welt, because a good welt is a given, I assume the youngster of today are no longer enamored by the novelty of a mobile phone or pocket-computer. As such, it is no longer a status symbol for most. So what the new iPhone came out and you got one, that's only a valid status symbol for maybe a few weeks, for over 1,000 USD invested in some models.

Youth of today, I don't see them going for a pocket atlas or any such form factor, I see them going for augmented spectacles or lenses. Everything indicates that a new 'moores law' is taking effect around energy storage and thermodynamics - we are no longer optimizing per-core clock speed, we are optimizing core count and the amount of energy that can be stored to later be turned into CPU cycles rather than heat. As soon as the battery technology will allow it, you will see lenses, whether they be spectacles or contacts, that will take in and assimilate your surroundings, your focus, and the imperceptible changes to your heart rate, retinal dilation, and ocular pressure responses to commercial items. It's not far fetched, we already know of this research being done. Despite the cumbersome experience of VR, we are seeing a point where it is no longer 3D TV or bluray level tech, it's sub-standard as a whole but more and more people are buying it because it shows promise.

I see in the future that our interface devices, whether they be communicators like phones, or additive interfaces like AR spectacles that can dole out retail info in response to a brief biomarker-spike like pupil dilation when glancing at a new pair of shoes. These devices will be funded by corporations much the same way tech learning materials, operating systems, and software is today. It makes most sense that before wider adoption, they'd first be available to those with the most capacity for realizing an ad-prompt via converting to a purchase, so think of like snapchat goggles release, but at your local best buy.

pocket-held mobile phones are the least optimal form factor for every purpose or task it can accommodate other than "fits in pocket". Mark my words, as soon as it can be bonded to a wearable lens, it will be, and the corporations will subsidize it heavily. You think adtech is bad now, just wait.

adolph2• 4 years ago

The Ordnung is a set of rules for Amish, Old Order Mennonite and Conservative Mennonite living. Ordnung is the German word for order, discipline, rule, arrangement, organization, or system. Because the Amish have no central church government, each assembly is autonomous and is its own governing authority. Thus, every local church maintains an individual set of rules, adhering to its own Ordnung, which may vary from district to district as each community administers its own guidelines.

arthurcolle• 4 years ago

You're Amish? Are you allowed to use a computer? I won't tell - just wondering.

soylentgraham• 4 years ago

Phones could be fine if 95% of the screen wasn't covered in popups, adverts, mailing list & cookie prompts.

kevin_thibedeau• 4 years ago

Firefox mobile + UBO brings the future to you today.

egypturnash4• 4 years ago

I make comics. I grew up reading stuff that used the space of a magazine spread in all kinds of clever ways, I fell in love with the way I can play with layout across a page. I made an entire graphic novel with multiple storylines running in parallel across every page.

A phone can show one or two panels at a time, at best. There’s a lot of stuff you just can’t do. It’s a tiny, limited canvas, even before it gets shitted up with ads and pop ups.

daguava2• 4 years ago

You have severely painted this as something that's easily done while clearly not reading what he posted...

Animats• 4 years ago

Yeah. This is a big problem with the "metaverse". Peering into a high-resolution 3D world via a hand-sized screen is tunnel vision. We're still a long way from the "swim goggles" form factor in VR headgear, which is what Carmack says is the minimum for reasonable consumer adoption levels.

Playing "Papers Please" on a phone requires a good memory. Do you remember what the recognized visa issuing cities for Kolechia are? You need to know that. If you have to swipe to the rulebook to look it up, your productivity will drop and you won't make enough money for the day to keep your family fed.

mr_toad3• 4 years ago

when the average young adult has a device in their pocket that folds out to the size of a paperback

The average young adult likes to use their phone one handed…

macintux4• 4 years ago

Had to skim for a bit to figure out what was going on, because I distinctly remember playing on my iPad many years ago. Turns out it was iPad only, this was the first time it was redesigned to fit on the phone screen. The author didn’t want to force users into landscape mode, which I completely understand: playing games in landscape feels alien on my iPhone.

Interesting look at the process of making the UI work well.

tosh• 4 years ago

Fantastic write-up. Thanks for sharing this!

simonbarker87• 4 years ago

I’m always amazed at how many programming languages there are. I’d never heard of Haxe, I don’t think it would have crossed my mind to look for something like it but here it is powering a highly successful game with, from what I can tell, a vibrant eco system around the language as well.

Perhaps I’m not curious enough to go exploring for these languages. I’ve used a few smaller ones in my years (usually because of an external forcing factor - like Squirrel running on ElecticImp devices) but I tend to stick to the big names we all know

tokinonagare• 4 years ago

I’d never heard of Haxe

Well it was born in France in a web game company (some of their games were pretty famous domestically) as an internal language, and the main selling point at first was the multiple compilation targets (PHP, JS) which included Flash. It wasn't something developed in English in the open at first like a lot of new languages are nowadays, so obviously it took some time to get some international exposure.

PoignardAzur• 4 years ago

Wait, you mean Motion Twin?

dhosek• 4 years ago

I came of age in an era in which it was often important which version of a language you were programming in. Not all C code could compile with all C compilers (which was part of the motivation behind the C preprocessor), likewise with Pascal, BASIC, FORTRAN, etc. IBM had two different Pascal compilers for VM/CMS named, confusingly, VS/Pascal and Pascal/VS which were almost but not quite identical in functionality and features. On timesharing systems, you might discover all manner of legacy languages lurking on the (dishwasher-sized) hard drives. I checked out a book on SNOBOL from the library to understand what was happening in some SPITBOL code that I found on UIC’s mainframe that was part of the source for a C compiler. Most personal computers came with some version of a Microsoft BASIC in ROM, but there were differences from one platform to the next so you couldn’t necessarily just type in a program written in AppleSoft BASIC and run it in QBASIC under DOS. The fact that in 2022 JVM languages run identically anywhere and that Rust is (almost) platform-agnostic is, to be honest, kind of miraculous.

MBCook2• 4 years ago

I’ve only ever heard of it in one context. About seven years ago TiVo announced that they were going to start using it to program their devices when they made the new (terrible) interface.

I don’t think I’ve heard about it since then.

egypturnash4• 4 years ago

Haxe is very much a games language, it started out (IIRC) as an ActionScript compiler by a game studio (Motion Twin, now most famous for Dead Cells) who was sick of trying to program in the shitty bare-minimum editor built into Flash, and evolved into its own language that compiled to the Flash plug-in’s VM. Motion Twin released it and its support tools as open source, and a lot of other Flash game devs picked it up.

9999000009992• 4 years ago

I really like Haxe.

I want smaller game engines to succeed, but the tooling is just painful to use.

From the time I spent with Haxe, it's very neat language. At the same time, half of why I make games is to learn.

If I have to use your custom language I'm not learning skills to use at work.

For example, with C# you can make games with several languages, you can also work on boring Fintech so you can pay your rent.

With .net core open source I'd love for more engines to use it. Godot 4 with Mono will be a very very strong contender.

boondaburrah3• 4 years ago

Haxe is wild to me since I recently started learning it and realised it's basically TypeScript but before TypeScript. Since it's statically typed and can hit C#/Java/C++/JS, I really want to try it in line of business applications as well.

rossvor• 4 years ago

If you see a devlog post from Lucas Pope you know it's going to be a goldmine. No matter the topic. Dude has a real knack in writing these, clearly describing the problem and the thought process on possible solution. And making it all very interesting so you yourself start thinking how would you address it or what other cool thing could be built instead.

Here's some of his other huge devlogs on TIGSOURCE:

1. Papers, Please. https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=29750.0

2. Return of the Obra Dinn. https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.0

scyzoryk_xyz• 4 years ago

Yes - I remember even coming across those before Papers became a bigger thing. So thorough

aerovistae2• 4 years ago

Yes, the guy is honestly some type of genius. To be this talented of a programmer, and across multiple platforms, languages, and toolsets just dazzles me. It's hard enough to just be competent with one platform. I can't imagine.

And on top of that he composes the music and makes the art and literally everything else.

I honestly just don't understand how a person can get that good at that many things.

hbn• 4 years ago

He's also a fantastic game designer. I played through Return of the Obra Dinn last year and it was one of the coolest game experiences I've had. It really doesn't hold your hand, it's just using logic and clues to piece together a mystery and put names to faces. Keep a notepad handy and it's a real fun time!

1ark• 4 years ago

Speaking as a game dev, I think you can learn it, but it takes time. I was interested since a kid to make games. And as a teenager programmed some for the web, and trying to learn C++ reading Quake2 source or whatever I could find, also bought some game dev books. Not much came out of it I thought. At around twenty, there were enough tutorials in Macromedia tools to sort of guide me toward something. Then I struck luck getting into game programming at a tech institute. Finally I could make something, it took more than a decade to get simple games on the screen for me. But I get easily distracted, procrastinate and lack enough IQ. Those books and formulas were hard for a mediocre teenager.

Parallel to all this I was interested in music too. Fooling around in ReBirth and Fruity Loops. Many years later got a guitar and tried to learn that, you get a lot of music theory from that. That theory is much easier than programming, still takes a lot of time.

Drawing I'm not really good at, but got an eye for what looks decent and can play with colors. On a computer it can almost be like cheating because you can be "inspired" by others. But books and tutorials on art exists too of course, how far that rabbit hole do you want to go? And 3D is a bit of a mix between tech and art, you could draw a cute character on paper front and side with a pencil. And when you model, texture, rig and animate that; it can be really impressive.

What I am trying to say, it looks like genius but it is a lot of work over a period. But it is creative/craft work, and not boring. And you can learn the basics of all the areas and make something great. When making apps, all those areas of you are unused. No music, no art. At best some graphic design (UI).

If you want to really put it in a compressed environment where it is not (?) overwhelming, but still technical, try C64 programming. There are lots of resources and step-by-step guides, and you will get a taste of everything and can build from there. We are many that have the desire to make our own games. Some are indeed geniuses, or very strong in multiple areas. Others just stumbled across Unity and are going through whatever guides there are with desire. These days you can choose your difficulty and dedication level.

For simpler games, getting your game to run on desktop, iOS and Android is not that hard. Because most platform code will be some glue, and then you are off inside your own game code. It takes weeks/months to figure that out, but then you are done and carry it with you for every game in the future. Then when you put it all together plus the uniqueness of your game (because it is unique right?!), you get a great and interesting blog post like this one!

collegeburner• 4 years ago

Arstechnica did a war stories with him on Return of the Obra Dinn, combining one of my fave video series with one of my fave gamedevs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMi6xgdSbMA

franknine• 4 years ago

Another great devlog thread on TIGSOURCE is Leilani's Island by Craig Forrester, it's a treasure trove of 2D platformer development:

https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=46289.0

frenchie14• 4 years ago

His youtube[0] also has some very interesting behind the scenes content. If you haven't seen the Obra Dinn ship building timelapse[1] you're in for a treat! (Major spoilers - don't watch unless you've already beaten the game!)

[0] https://www.youtube.com/user/dukope1 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZFoBvJf8Ug

dclowd99012• 4 years ago

He wrote an entire app in unity just for the schematic playback. I’m gobsmacked by his ingenuity!

dclowd99012• 4 years ago

From a practical standpoint, I can’t even understand how he writes these! Presumably, this process took him months (a year?) to work through. What was he doing that whole time? Taking notes and captures for an eventual blog post? It just seems he has an incredible ability for organization and foresight, one that I am deeply jealous of.

BoredPuffin• 4 years ago

Thanks for recommending this! Haven't heard of him before but really interesting read.

bradknowles• 4 years ago

TL;DR -- it's a game. That was designed for computers with a mouse and not for a touch-oriented environment, and so a lot of hard work had to be done to port it to phones.

chairhairair3• 4 years ago

The productivity of solo indie game devs is just really impressive.

While I’m aware of the “go fast alone, go far together” quote, I’m depressed by how inefficient app/ui development is at big tech companies compared to game studios, especially short staffed indies.

Really makes me wonder about the “engineering excellence” that tech leads and “architects” pride themselves in when games are developed much more quickly and are - to my eye - much more stable and performant.

chairhairair3• 4 years ago

Expanding on this in a reply to my own comment.

Grinding Gear Games, as an example, is a NZ based game studio that releases a new expansion to their famous RPG - Path of Exile - every three months.

The game is not a simple program by any stretch - which might be a fair criticism for Papers Please by comparison since it is purely client-side and all possible states of the game can be fairly easily enumerated.

Path of Exile is a persistent cross-platform 3D online multiplayer game that has daunting requirements for consistency, latency, and graphical performance.

Despite that, each three month release cycle introduces more new UI elements and features than I think the entirety of Google apps release in the same timeframe. And that’s not because Google isn’t trying to build new things - they are and I’ve written UI for several of those projects.

Does anyone else feel a real sense of deflation when it comes to app/web development velocity compared to games?

bestinterest• 4 years ago

I have the exact same feelings.

Is immediate mode GUI's just that much better? Instead of a complex React/Redux style setup, how much easier would state management be if we had a render loop like game dev? Does that even make sense?

I am very envious at the pure programming skills of so many game developers. UI's in indie games are just a side thing in the deep complexity of a game and they end up looking incredible compared to the level of effort required for year long web app projects.

MrDresden• 4 years ago

Not to take anything away from the game devs (PoE is great and I wish I had started playing sooner) but I wonder how much internal politics plays a part.

I can imagine that the game studio has most if not everyone onboard helping collectively to make the game better each iteration. It is a common goal.

How many different product teams and managers get in the way for products at other companies where each is fighting for funding or privilege?

Being in that kind of environment is draining for the product teams.

Having worked at places that matched both these situations, I know where the quality and quantity of my output was greater.

spaceman_20203• 4 years ago

The inertia at big tech companies is likely from the overwhelming weight of the business itself. No one wants to push out updates lest it upset the finally tuned business machinery.

A UI change can impact usage. Which can impact revenue. Which can impact stock price.

The end users for large tech companies are essentially shareholders and investors.

tomc1985• 4 years ago

They don't start fresh every three months.

Usually they have multiple leagues cooking up in the oven at any given time, so that if the league they want to release isn't ready in time, another, simpler idea will likely be within reach of completion.

The timeline is as such because their business model requires engagement spikes every three months. Remember that Path of Exile is free-to-play.

I also want to add that PoE has grown into one of, if not THE most complex games ever made; there are so many overlapping systems and mechanics that there were memes about what would happen if they added any more special destination buttons to the worldmap. And I'm not even talking about the initial release; it was a complicated game then, but now it has the mechanics of at least a dozen leagues baked into the core game play; many of those leagues are an entire game unto themselves (like Delve)

I love it for this, but it makes me sad that most gamers don't try and reason about this complex thing, and instead follow build guides and copy streamers, instead of experiment. Also, because of the nature of the game's deisgn, you need to play for a stupendous amount of hours to reach the end- endgame, and for most folks you also need to trade items with people IRL as the designers intentionally do not add a decent trade system. There are a lot of other quirks that reflect the designers' intent to not make life easy, either, and players both love and hate that.

Jare• 4 years ago

A lot of it is about tradeoffs (long term vs one-off projects, business stakeholders, and a long etc), but there's also significant selection bias. Most "indie" projects die before having much of a playable thing, and many successful solo indie projects can take many long and grueling years (e.g. Stardew Valley).

Engineering in most organisations will place stability and predictability very high among priorities, and pay a hefty price for it (sometimes, messing up along the way and getting neither benefit). An individually brilliant engineer can be a great asset if properly managed, but you need the majority of people to be less of an outlier.

chairhairair3• 4 years ago

I think we can ignore the selection bias because I’m not aware of any “AAA app” (for lack of a better term) that moves as quickly and productively as the best game studios do (see my comment about Grinding Gear Games below). Additionally, these apps employ engineers that are supposedly amongst the best money can buy. At least, if there is some better way to hire top engineers it should be fairly obvious in AAA app output of some orgs with better hiring processes - but I’m not aware of any such apps or orgs.

As for stability and predictability, I’m not confident that AAA apps are hugely (or maybe even significantly) more stable or predictable than the best games. Maybe my tolerance for bugs is higher in games than apps, but I do seem to tolerate quite a lot of jank and slowness from apps, so I’m not sure.

ElevenLathe2• 4 years ago

I've had my eyes opened recently onto the world of modern game editors (Unity, Unreal, Godot, etc.) by watching gamedev streams. The productivity of these environments, and their associated asset stores, is amazing. You can't help but think that other domains would also be well-served by a fully-integrated experience like this. Surely the universe of "webapps" or "unix-y network services" is at least as constrained as "3D games" is (possibly more?).

I would certainly be interested in a "Unity for line-of-business apps." I guess this was VB6 lol.

ink404• 4 years ago

do you have any streams that you'd recommend?

BigJono• 4 years ago

The interesting thing is that the other comment alongside yours is talking about GGG, who rolled their own as a team of about 6 (in the early days), and they're by far the most productive game developer I've ever seen.

I think Unity and the like have made the average project much more productive, but they don't add power to the top end. The power of having everything perfectly customisable by a team of experts with perfect domain knowledge is just too much for anyone else to match by getting quick wins off the work of others.

yieldcrv3• 4 years ago

how far do you really need to go, alone

You need a win, but not that big of a win in the grand scheme of things

Six figures, a couple million

Whereas big studios need multiple hundred million+ hits

oreally• 4 years ago

Yea the self wankery you see when these people place on insubstantial things like correctness against all possible situations in their PRs is amusing.

Elon once wanted to move his programmers to windows upon seeing how fast world of warcraft was developed. Goes to show how fast people can be if they care about the things that matter.

spaceman_20203• 4 years ago

I don’t play a lot of games anymore, but the last one I spent a considerable amount of time with was Stardew Valley. And I couldn’t believe it was made by just one guy.

grapeskin• 4 years ago

Having a complete mental map of your work environment is the key. Nothing changes without your approval and you have some idea of when and where every change was made along with what it does.

Most of dev work is making sure other people can make sense of your work. With solo dev, that step is basically unnecessary.

I think it’s also why some indie games (eg binding of Isaac) get completely remade instead of making updates a year later. Walk away from the project for a couple months and it’s an untamable beast.

9999000009992• 4 years ago

Remember last Tuesday when you wanted to add something, but your manager said no.

Remember 2 weeks ago, and you really wanted to implement CICD, but the DevOps team told you not to.

When you're developing any solo projects, you don't have anyone else telling you what you can't do.

This is amazing, but you can also easily spend countless hours building something nobody really likes. I've made a small handful of games, a few of them have been released publicly. If I had to guess, at most maybe 20 people have played my games.

But I taught myself everything I know via learning game development, and my career is amazing.

Even now, I'm trying out different engines and having a blast. Odds are. I'll probably never produce anything that becomes all that popular. It'll just be another throwaway game on itch that nobody plays, but I can say without a doubt I had a hell of a time building it.

keyle• 4 years ago

The blog post is really top tier. Consider how much time some engineers spend considering details when they're just being contracted to do a job (I've work with lots) and how this indie game project is being explained, nitpicked, loved and cherished.

The blog post alone makes you want to purchase whatever this person has been working on based on how much passion is oozing off the explanation of how it's made.

Side note... A lot of YouTubers also work like this: pushing the craftsmanship to beyond expectation to almost cause an emotional reaction.

In this case though, it's genuine engineering with high standards.

lemming• 4 years ago

IMO you should absolutely buy what he produces, partly as you say to support a genuine craftsman, but also because (unsurprisingly) the games he produces are really good. I also think of my purchases as a donation to keep his blog posts coming.

kergonath3• 4 years ago

The blog post alone makes you want to purchase whatever this person has been working on based on how much passion is oozing off the explanation of how it's made.

Papers Please is nice, but Return of the Obra Dinn is a masterpiece. Honestly. A very cool concept with some impressive attention to detail. Pixel-perfect 1-bit dithered graphics, amazing soundtrack, and a nice story. I don’t have a link here but there was a forum thread somewhere where he discussed his progress as he was making the game. It’s a bit long but we’ll worth a read as well.

the_af4• 4 years ago

I consider both games to be masterpieces, keeping my attention even when I was bored with gaming in general.

I also played Helsing's Fire on the iPad, which while not a masterpiece, is still pretty fun!

jsmith452• 4 years ago

The default mode of Obra Dinn actually is not using true 1 bit graphics. It is downsampled double resolution rendering, with additional softening added. It is very subtle about it, and I only noticed on my second play-though when I noticed the book contents seemed to have very slightly different color than the rest of the game.

One can force true one bit graphics ("digital mode"), but the downside is greater flicker in the dithering dots when moving.

wly_cdgr2• 4 years ago

This blog post is good, but is pretty average stuff for a real professional. You are just used to reading webdev tip&trick postlets from third-rate hacks

deathanatos• 4 years ago

No, this is definitely high-quality. Like the person you're responding to, far higher quality than a lot of professional work I've seen. This is very clearly someone who cares about the end result, not just about getting it done, and a lot of work I've seen in my career, the person cares more about just getting it done, than they do about getting it done right.

I'd also say it's about having the skill to do this: as other posters note, there are multiple competencies on display in that post; graphics, coding, testing, etc. Each of those takes time to hone. I've worked with any number of people that are not honing their skills, because when they get stuck or hit problems, will not take the time to dig into them and really understand exactly what problem they hit, why they hit it, and how whatever language/tool/system they're working with works. They'll guess until something appears to work, and then move on.

I'd put the detail in this blog post up there with Friday Factorio Facts, and that is also another top-notch game.

If your professional environment is just full of people working at or even above the level here, you should know you have it good. And I think they do exist: I've definitely joined places where there are just lots of incredible people; in hindsight I wish I'd done a better job of learning and listening, when I had that…

unstatusthequo• 4 years ago

For those annoyed with the Apple Store not finding it under “papers please” and forcing you to use the comma instead of being sensical, here is the link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/papers-please/id935216956

I scrolled several screens finding only knock offs without the comma. The App Store and Apple Music search experience is not great.

Anyway, happily bought this game again in this new format! Well done, sir!

bbx• 4 years ago

I knew about this game at launch but only bought it last year to play on a Windows tablet. Always thought I’d love the game… And I did.

My only regret was that I couldn’t play it more often, on the go, on my phone. I understood why, considering the intricate gameplay and the precise interface required, it wasn’t possible.

And then suddenly… this. Instant buy.

krallja2• 4 years ago

This is exactly how I would have hoped to find out “Papers, Please!” is out for mobile phones.

game-of-throws• 4 years ago

I created Papers, Please in 2013 specifically for desktop computers with mouse control.

This is interesting to read. When I first played it I was dying for touch controls. It seemed like such a natural fit for the gameplay of sliding papers around.

lupire• 4 years ago

It's largely a speed game, so you need mouse.

at_• 4 years ago

Find his work endlessly inspiring not just in terms of how good it is, but also in the way it has proved there's an audience hungry for the experimental and conceptually quite challenging games he makes, too -- carved a path and set the bar for artistically inclined game-devs (and game-dev inclined artists)

yojo2• 4 years ago

I played through Papers, Please back when it came out on desktop, and at the time I remember wondering: "why is this fun?" I enjoyed it tremendously, but on the surface that didn't make any sense. Who wants to play an immigration officer sim? Getting this peek behind the curtain helped me understand all the little decisions that add up to an unexpectedly fun experience.

The level of thought given to tiny UI interactions here is wonderful. Details like being able to swipe around to "play" with the dangling pull chain. Any other dev would just make it a static image and call it a day. But these little bits of magic working together transform one of the most boring possible topics into a real gem of a game. This post should be required reading for interaction designers.

seba_dos17• 4 years ago

Any other dev would just make it a static image and call it a day.

You think so? Games are often full of little things like that. That's a good thing to point out, but it certainly doesn't seem as unusual as you paint it. Letting the user be playful is generally what games are good at ;)

yojo2• 4 years ago

I agree that good games give you things to play with, but this is literally the toggle to slide out a UI element, and only exists because a phone screen was too small for the original design to fit. If it had been a little triangle that you tapped, no one would have said anything. Instead it’s got realistic chain physics and jingles around as you move the card.

I’m trying to think of another instance of “sliding out a control” being given this level of attention, and I’m drawing a blank. It feels like an unusually high level of effort to put into a UI concession for a port that was going to sell well anyway.

Granted, this game is mostly about sliding UI elements around, so maybe it is more integral to the experience than in other games.

chii2• 4 years ago

I remember wondering: "why is this fun?"

Other than the tactility of the UI (which is a major part of the game), the reason, i believe, it is fun is because the game's mechanics matches that of the actual role you play in the story. Many games don't really get this correct (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludonarrative_dissonance).

In papers please, your decisions aren't clear cut, like in a regular RPG game, where you can "choose" to be a good guy or a bad guy by selecting one of two options, and one is clearly meant to be the good choice with the good ending, and the other bad. Papers please actually make you think like someone surviving a authoritarian regime, and your actions reflect that role too (you would, for example, choose not to feed, if family isn't absolutely hungry, or that you would attempt to deny entry as fast as possible, since a denied entry doesn't make you any money - no room for sympathies).

It makes the game feel "real".

marvin2• 4 years ago

The "RPG" element of "obviously good, obviously evil" decision always felt contrived to me. Most people would never choose to be evil. Evil grows out of processes much more complicated and human than that.

This seemed obvious to me even when I was 14, but maybe our culture has been stuck in a place where people's understanding of good and evil does not match reality. Propaganda during WWII (or any was, really) would be an obvious culprit.

ridiculous_fish• 4 years ago

Just wanted to say thank you for Papers, Please! I loved playing it on my iPad and it's awesome to have it available for my phone now too - a free update no less.

radiojasper• 4 years ago

This is one of the coolest things I've read in a while. I love the thought process behind each element of the game and it's all executed very well. As a fan of the desktop game, I can't wait to try this out on mobile.

stijnsanders• 4 years ago

( https://dukope.com/devlogs/ doesn't appear to have a feed URL? )

diebeforei485• 4 years ago

I own the iPad version. Anyone know if I need to pay again for the iPhone version?

snoopy_telex• 4 years ago

https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/25/23277003/papers-please-mo...

He added that the game would be available as an update to the 2014 iPad app

routerl• 4 years ago

You don't. Go buy it and the price will be gone.

lastdong• 4 years ago

Love this game, bought it for different platforms over the years. I’ll prob end up doing the same for mobile :) Papers Please, FTL and Don’t Starve (discovered them around the same time) are on my top list of games, it was a period of very fine releases.

macintux4• 4 years ago

Thanks for reminding me I need to play Don’t Starve again. Dangerously addictive though.

jordanmorgan102• 4 years ago

There’s a certain energy that’s either unmatched, or it’s just new to me, specifically from indie game developers that invigorates me. His post is just kinda filled with a “love of the game” vibe. I don’t feel like other tech related industries have that same art house feel like game developers seem to have, or at least write about. You don’t really see it in the sass space, or in my world of iOS, etc.

Just something I’ve noticed about the indie games world. Seems like an inspiring, genuine space.

spaceman_20203• 4 years ago

Imo, indie game devs don’t get nearly the amount of mainstream attention they get as artists. So many of them do everything on their own, from the art and music to, of course, the coding.

That kind of cross-discipline talent is so hard to find.

marvin2• 4 years ago

I think indie game devs of Pope's talent, motivation and ability are exceedingly rare. We're seeing only those who survive a filter that removes 99%. But the results are absolutely formidable.

jordanmorgan102• 4 years ago

True, I’m looking at the top 1% I’m sure when I made that comment. I guess another observation is someone of his stature could come off a lot more…entitled? I guess? But man, his post is pure though.

alexb_• 4 years ago

I actually didn't know it was on mobile, so I searched for "Papers Please" on the Google Play store. Only complete garbage came up, and I had to actually go to the website to find a link to the game (which only has 5k downloads!)

I wonder if there's a solution to this.

Hyperbolicum• 4 years ago

The issue is the missing comma, I ran into the same problem. Searching for "Papers, please" will yield the expected result.

Maybe that's something that can be configured?

danparsonson• 4 years ago

And for me at least it was necessary to include the quotation marks too.

komadori• 4 years ago

Oh, wow, thanks! I did likewise and assumed the mobile port hadn't actually been released yet. Google's search is clearly awful :-/.

fragmede2• 4 years ago

Hilariously the correct play store link is the second hit for https://www.google.com/search?q=papers+please+android

djhworld• 4 years ago

Thanks, I searched the play store for both "papers please" and "papers, please" which didn't yield any meaningful results. If I hadn't have read this comment I would have (lazily) assumed it was iOS only.

Play store says there have been 4000 downloads so at least some people are getting to that page, but probably through direct links rather than search

mijoharas• 4 years ago

Weirdly I was lookingt to see if there was a papers please on Android last week and concluded it hadn't been ported to mobile because of the results.

Lucky this came up on HN so I found out. If that weren't the case I doubt I'd have thought about it again and wouldn't have ever bought/played it.

Eric_WVGG• 4 years ago

Magnificent craftsmanship.

Another of my favorite games on the iPad is Darkest Dungeon. While perfectly legible and playable on the touch screen, the ignored opportunities for touch improvement (entire inches of “letterboxed” screen space, buttons sized for mouse but too small for pinkies, drag-to-scroll lists) are so disappointing.

funstuff007• 4 years ago

here, in 2022, desktop computers no longer exist and all computing is done via handheld mobile telephone. Time to update this dinosaur.

What a witty fellow.

Underphil• 4 years ago

I took it as tongue-in-cheek but as a desktop loving dinosaur I couldn't help feel mildly personally attacked :)

daguava2• 4 years ago

The attention to detail and player experience in this is second to none, this article is a treat, thank you for sharing.

Working in the gaming industry myself, everything here spoke to what I want gaming to be.

yieldcrv3• 4 years ago

I thought this has been on ipad forever

MattRix• 4 years ago

Yes it has. He talks about the iPad version in the post.

yieldcrv3• 4 years ago

I've gone through this post now, it is very well thought out!

dicytea• 4 years ago

Anyone else experiencing a weird visual illusion with the second code screenshot, or am I just going crazy? It looks almost as if the text is slightly tilted, but measuring it with a grid shows that they're perfectly aligned.

mastax• 4 years ago

Haxe is really unusual and interesting, and I don't think it gets talked about enough.

Haxe can build cross-platform applications targeting JavaScript, C++, C#, Java, JVM, Python, Lua, PHP, Flash, and allows access to each platform's native capabilities. Haxe has its own VMs (HashLink and NekoVM) but can also run in interpreted mode.

Compiling from one language to another isnt particularly unusual, but compiling from one language to so many is very unusual. On first impression it sounds unserious—real compilers output machine code—it's tempting to denigrate it by calling it a transpiler. But there are a lot of advantages that come with this approach. You always have access to the full capabilities of your target platforms. From a single language you can write code that is massively portable while also targeting specific platforms with just an if statement.

The "real" compiler authors spend months working on linkage, calling conventions, runtimes, symbol mangling, allocators, and debuginfo trying to get their native code to link properly to the objective-c frameworks on iOS—and it never feels quite right. If you instead compile to objective-c, a lot of things get easier. It's a very pragmatic approach.

boondaburrah3• 4 years ago

There's also that Haxe is older than a lot of the stuff we take for granted today. It's roots are in ActionScript, and it started as basically a successor to AS2 before Adobe came out with ActionScript 3. It did "same codebase on server and client" by compiling to flash bytecode and PHP before node existed. It's ECMAScript/AS roots + static types + type inference make it feel like alternate-timeline TypeScript as it also compiles to JS.

So it's completely comfortable for me. AND I can hit C++ if the platform demands it!

chii2• 4 years ago

one aspect that's a bit underrated in haxe isn't just the cross-compilation, but the macro system - it's way more powerful a macro system than the regular macros found in C/C++. It's closer to a LISP macro, but only at compile time (rather than also runtime macros).

For example, you can define a json file, and have a macro that produce a class that matches that json file's fields. It would type-check (and you get auto-complete, for example, if you called that class's fields in another function). Of course, there's nothing special about a json file...why not use a live schema fetched from the internet! https://code.haxe.org/category/macros/completion-from-url.ht...

vmladenov• 4 years ago

On first impression it sounds unserious—real compilers output machine code—it's tempting to denigrate it by calling it a transpiler.

What? No, this is so wrong. “Real” compilers transform input from a source language to a target language. That’s it. A program could compile a language to itself with functions inlined and it would still be a compiler. Transpiler is a dumb word made up to identify compilers that output valid source for a chosen language.

cedilla• 4 years ago

Transpiler is a very useful word. It makes it clear that the translation doesn't happen from a high-level language to a low-level language as is usually implicitly assumed.

Arguing about the technical definition of compiler misses the point outside of a scientific paper. Connotations are more important than an arbitrary definition you happen to agreee with.

TazeTSchnitzel• 4 years ago

The "real" compiler authors spend months working on linkage, calling conventions, runtimes, symbol mangling, allocators, and debuginfo

Don't worry: targeting high-level languages gives you a different, equally-frustrating set of problems! Actually, many of them have equivalents to the low-level ones: you also have to worry about calling conventions, name mangling, runtimes… they just look quite different.

Especially you want to support any kind of dynamic functionality, there are many uncomfortable trade-offs involved.

bogwog4• 4 years ago

Haxe's transpiling helped me in a project once. The client needed a small-ish web app written ASAP, but they didn't know anything about their backend/stack when asked since they were non-technical and using an external provider for everything. The provider was not responding to emails for some reason, and the deadline was approaching, so I decided to start writing the thing in Haxe.

I figured they were either running PHP/SQL or Node, so I wrote a simple backend in a way that would make it easy for to deploy to either one with minimal changes. By the time the provider finally replied, the project was nearly half way complete. It turned out that they were using a standard PHP/SQL stack, so had I gone with Javascript there would've been problems. Instead, all I had to do was change one flag in my build system.

I don't know if this is a big selling point for Haxe since it's such a highly specific situation... but it's probably at least worth mentioning :P

sitkack• 4 years ago

Brilliant!

psyc• 4 years ago

I was ready to charge in here and pitch a fit because I thought the title was referring to storage / memory.

zbird• 4 years ago

Yeah, though on the other hand the title does not seem particularly taxing. "Shove it down to Unity" and then the big bulk of the work is cramming the game into a small screen.

The 'Auto Player Testing' is smart and a token of good design, as he must have completely decoupled IO from the main game logic. That seemed the most interesting to me.

silisili• 4 years ago

I don't know a lot about Haxe, or C#, but that has to be the cleanest transpiler results I've seen to date.

Most transpilers I've toyed with(admittedly, not many, and years ago) gave every variable and function awful autogenerated names.

xmprt• 4 years ago

The blog post was a blast to read and even better, it served as a great trailer for the game. Bought it immediately after reading. I wish more game devs wrote blog posts like this.

sintezcs• 4 years ago

Can’t find it in the AppStore :(( looks like some regional restrictions are set

metahost• 4 years ago

https://apps.apple.com/in/app/papers-please/id935216956

mysterydip• 4 years ago

I thought this just came out for mobile? There's reviews that say 7 years ago.

MOARDONGZPLZ2• 4 years ago

This is such a good blog post. I also didn’t know this author was behind Obra Dinn, but that one is also great. I used to play Papers Please years ago and will certainly purchase it when it does come out for iPhone.

emllnd• 4 years ago

It’s available on the iPhone App Store for me!

MOARDONGZPLZ2• 4 years ago

Wow thanks! I didn’t see it when I checked, but needed to scroll down a bit. One of the idiosyncrasies of the App Store not prioritizing exact text matches.

wowokay• 4 years ago

Desktops still exist! In fact streamers and PC gamers use them! I don’t really play games on my phone I think the people that do are usually playing games because it’s convenient or prioritized in cost over desktops, since everyone believes they and there kids need phones.

neycoda• 4 years ago

Oh, I forgot that desktop computers don't exist. I'll have to do my work on my phone now.

rolph• 4 years ago

"I created Papers, Please in 2013 specifically for desktop computers with mouse control. Now, here, in 2022, desktop computers no longer exist and all computing is done via handheld mobile telephone."

No . Desktop and mobile are 2 different ecosystems. The users have desktops; those who are used, have mobile; those who are kings, have both.

mr_toad3• 4 years ago

Satire: The use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.

Cramming 'Papers, Please' onto Phones

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